


Plant a Fig Tree

by anti_ela



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Body Horror, Dubious Consent, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Horror, M/M, The Nexus - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26842456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anti_ela/pseuds/anti_ela
Summary: It isn't Spock. Jim's certain of that.(The dubious consent is fade to black, and Jim is aware that his partner is lying to him but chooses to move forward.)
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Original Character(s), James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	Plant a Fig Tree

It isn't Spock. Jim's certain of that.

They don't move right; that is, they move too exactly. Too much like some impersonation of Spock, all straight lines and clean angles. Spock is graceful, but he's not perfect.

Spock's also never brought Jim fruit still warm from the sun. They do so every day, ducking under the eave of Jim's little cabin, holding figs in their shirt. They smile at him, extend their fingers to kiss him. Jim's only a man; he kisses back.

Their eyes are the warm, clear brown of the Vulcan he loves. He kisses them the human way, too.

Today, the figs are bright green, chartreuse, a color named after a fermented herbal tonic made by monks on ancient Earth. Jim's never tried it. He suspects, but chooses not to confirm, that if he wanted badly enough, they would bring him bottles with their fruit.

They set the figs down on the table before him. Their long, pale fingers pluck one, pinch the stem, peel the skin. They break the fruit into halves. The flesh is white; the seeds are red.

Jim opens his lips and looks into their kind brown eyes. They place a piece of fruit on his tongue (today's flavors: apple, rose, honey, strawberry). He licks juice from their fingers, and suddenly their gaze sharpens, turns hungry.

Spock would have known when Jim stopped believing. Spock would have felt it; Jim's skin would betray him.

They have no such advantage.

Jim is comfortable offering his body to those with power over him. So often, they believe with his body comes his mind, but that has never been the case. He's a romantic, not a fool.

They pull him up, kiss him greedily. The afternoon ends the way most do, now that he knows how to keep their speech to a minimum. Give them what they want, and he won't have to hear them mimic Spock. A simple choice.

After, when they hold him, he wonders why growing old with Spock and a fig tree are so imprinted on his heart. How many years has it been? Yet this prison where he can't age, where Spock can't reach him, remains the same.

Rain spatters against the roof, then waves of rain crash against it. The windows rattle as the temperature drops.

They stiffen behind him. "Jim?" Their breath stirs the hair beside his ear. "Is something wrong?"

Spock would have known he was crying, too.

"Do you ever think about Cochrane and his Companion?" Jim asks.

"No, Jim."

"I do." He listens to the whistling wind. "Do you think she would have been better off without him?"

Their hold on him tightens. "Impossible to say."

"He taught her how to feel loneliness," Jim says lightly, wondering how many years Spock has been without him. "That seems cruel, don't you think?"

They are silent for a time. "Why do you ask?"

"Do you remember planting the fig tree, Spock?"

No answer. He turns in their arms.

"Have you ever noticed that the fruit is different every day?" He smiles gently, watching their expression, so like and unlike what they ought to be. "Did you think that was normal?"

"Jim..."

His features close, become the captain's once again. "Let me out."

Something absent becomes present. Outside, the weather calms; the temperature rises. On cue, the night sounds of birds and insects begin.

"I cannot do that," they say.

"Explain," he commands.

"My purpose is to bring joy. To exile you would bring you pain."

"Yet I am not joyful," he says.

They blink. "This is the shape of your joy--"

He interrupts, "But I need the real thing. Anything less is a mockery."

They nod. "This seeming will be altered. Thank you for the opportunity to better serve you."

"Wait!" he cries. "Is this the first such change?"

They look at him. "This is the 74th iteration."

Mind racing, he stares into their cold brown eyes. "My memory--you alter it?"

They hesitate. "That is now included in your iteration upgrades."

"I need him," he says. "You're so powerful; yet you've tried, and failed, 74 times. Can't you see I need him?"

"Spock has not been present in every attempt," they say coldly.

"How long did those versions last?" he asks dryly.

Their hands close around his arms, pull him closer. He doesn't resist. There's no need. "If there is a flaw in my portrayal, it is because your memory is flawed."

"As he would say," Jim says, "I'm only human. Besides, when the one you love surprises you, isn't that simply something new to love?"

They study his face and relax their grip. Something in their expression softens in a way that, for once, mimics nothing.

"How many years have you kept me?" Jim asks softly.

"Endless years, and none at all."

He thinks for a moment. "Outside of this realm, has time passed?"

"If I should wish it," they say, and bring up one hand to brush his hair from his face.

He listens to the crickets, so carefully chosen to make him happy. "Please let me go to him," he says. "He needs me."

"I need you," they say.

He smiles crookedly. "Would you be satisfied by a simulation?"

They don't answer.

"If it helps, yours isn't the first paradise I couldn't accept."

They pull him into a devouring kiss, which he doesn't react to. After several moments, they pull away. "He's old," they growl.

"That's perfect," Jim says with a smile, not pointing out that the being implied they can control time. "I've only got thirty or forty years left; it would be nice to spend our last years together, instead of one of us leaving the other behind."

They shift minutely, eyes shuttering. Silence spreads from them to the cabin walls to the fields outside. Black fills the windows. Jim no longer feels the cotton of his shirt or the heat of not-Spock's body. He looks into the shifting mass that was their face, but before it can settle into its true form, he's--

\--elsewhere.

High above him, silver birds float on endless thermals in Vulcan's pale blue sky. Wisps of clouds form and disperse. The ground is hot on his feet; the air burns his throat. Dust and sand find their way into his shoes, his mouth, his eyes.

He laughs brightly, helplessly, too happy to be this planet's polite  


"Jim?" comes a voice from behind him, and for the first time in countless days, the resonance, the pitch, the feeling is right.

He turns, and sees Spock--it must be Spock--blinking at him from the doorway of a greenhouse. "You're old," he says, striding forward.

"Jim," Spock says, no trace of question now. His face is lined by all of the years they were apart.

Jim stops a foot away. "Can I kiss you?"

"I believe you ought to, Jim," Spock says. He smiles with his eyes, with how soft he makes his face. How beautiful he is.

They move together, as the poets have long said only t'hy'la can. They join in body, in mind, in soul. They do not plant fig trees (Jim has lost his taste for them), but that is not the only fruit that grows in the desert.


End file.
